Silence: that word perhaps applies most to actor and director Helmert Woudenberg. He mentioned himself in an interview with NRC “a war orphan”: his father died early in 1945 in Poland as an Untersturmführer in a Dutch Waffen-SS unit. A month after his death, son Helmert was born on February 15, 1945 in Elspe, Germany. His mother died of an infection shortly after the war. Helmert Woudenberg grew up in foster families in Hoofddorp and Hilversum after the war. Last Thursday, November 23, he died suddenly of a heart attack. He was 78 years old and was still playing in the middle of the theater tour Blindabout an old father who is cared for by his daughter.
Woudenberg became known to the general public through his film roles in Blue Movie (1971), What do I see!? (1971) and Amsterdamned (1988). He also appeared as Commissioner Hoeben in the TV series Cops Maastricht. (2008-2010). One of his greatest achievements was his significance as co-founder and leading actor of the legendary company Het Werkteater, a collective with which he was associated between 1970 and 1982. Woudenberg took his final exams at the Amsterdam Theater School in 1968, where one of his classmates was actor and presenter Joost Prinsen. When asked, Prinsen says that Woudenberg and he “had a strong bond of friendship from the start, because we both came from the province, I from Vught and Helmert from Hoofddorp. The rest of the students came from the Randstad.” Prinsen praises Woudenberg’s playing style as “penetrating”. From the start at the Theater School, Prinsen says, “I was fascinated by Woudenberg’s play. It always came ‘in’ to you.”
Also read
‘Children know more about war now than we did then’
Woudenberg’s grandfather Hendrik Jan Woudenberg was an NSB leader. During his years of study at the Theater School, Woudenberg lived with his grandmother in Amsterdam. However heavy the war experience was on Woudenberg, in his later career he had the courage to make a number of performances about it that certainly deserve the label ‘penetrating’, such as Hell, Aquarius, Child of my parents, The Traitors of the Jews and Hannie Schaft. He presented some of these performances during the Theater Na de Dam festival with amateur players. He wanted, in his own words, to “build a bridge between the past and present”.
Silver Nipkow disk
One of Woudenberg’s achievements at Het Werkteater was his performance in the performance Intake, filmed in 1979 by filmmaker Erik van Zuylen. The subject of the performance was the ins and outs of a hospital. The script was by Marja Kok, inspired by two other Werkteater performances You have to live with it and Like death. The film won numerous awards, including the Silver Nipkow Disc, and was shown all over the world. The working method of Het Werkteater is still considered important because of the way in which the hierarchy of the theater system was broken with an all-determining director. Woudenberg continued this independent performance after his departure in a large number of solo performances for which he wrote the text and directed himself, including Jesus Christ and Pim Fortuyn. The overwhelmingly honest piece Traitor (2016) about Woudenberg’s NSB grandfather Hendrik Jan showed great courage, with which he broke much of the silence from his early youth.
He proved that current developments were close to his heart with his convincing, heartfelt performance in the piece Mansholt (2015) about the complex and threatened situation of farming life. In this role as agriculture minister, he was able to draw on his personal life as a boy who grew up in a farming family in Hoofddorp after the war. That must be the reason Mansholt belongs to one of Woudenberg’s grand, later performances, together with Hell and Livable: an actor who, entirely according to his own beliefs, had to be able to play fire, earth, water and air. The more shades the better, that characterized him.
#Actor #Helmert #Woudenberg #wanted #build #bridge #present